Jail sentence cut for home invader who threatened to kill ex-partner with hammer

Mark Russell

The state’s highest court has cut the jail sentence for a laboratory technician who breached a family violence intervention order by breaking into his former partner’s home and threatening to kill her with a hammer.

Court of Appeal Justices Geoffrey Nettle, Pamela Tate and David Beach reduced the man’s jail term by 18 months after noting that the victim was not injured during her ordeal.

The technician, 50, had been jailed for seven years and three months after pleading guilty to two charges of assault and charges of making a threat to kill, using a carriage service to harass or menace, aggravated burglary, making a threat to inflict serious injury, criminal damage and contravening an intervention order.

In their judgment, the appeal judges said the technician and his defacto partner had been together for nine months when, on April 20, 2012, he left a message on her mobile phone saying, ‘‘You will bring some ice home else I will f---ing kill you’’.

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The victim listened to the message and slept in her car that night.

The technician called the victim six days later and told her: ‘‘Sleep tight sweetheart, I’m coming to get ya.’’ The victim went to the police and was granted a family violence intervention order on May 3.

The technician broke into the victim’s home nine days later and woke her at about 2.15am by shining a torch in her face.

Armed with a claw hammer, he twice told the victim: ‘‘Get up and get out of bed or I’m going to put this through your head.’’

The victim managed to barricade herself in the bathroom as the man repeatedly bashed the door with the hammer, telling her, ‘‘If you call the police I will put the hammer through your head.’’

The terrified victim climbed through the bathroom window and jumped over the back fence into a neighbour’s yard before calling the police.

The technician then used the hammer to damage the victim’s television, break all the panes in the front window and smash several windows of the victim’s car.

Claiming his jail sentence had been manifestly excessive, the technician rejected the sentencing judge’s conclusion that his prospects for rehabilitation were ‘‘very guarded’’.

The technician said not enough credit had been given to the progress he had made since his arrest, including courses he had completed while in custody, and his remorse.

The appeal judges said the technician had a complex history of mental health problems and had been sexually assaulted for about two years when he was a young boy.

Despite this background, he had completed a Bachelor of Applied Science and was married with a child before his wife left him in 2001.

‘‘It is from that time that the appellant’s life appears to have spiralled out of control,’’ the judges said.

‘‘The charges for which the appellant pleaded guilty are serious charges. Domestic violence of the kind engaged in by the appellant is serious. That said, and without downplaying in any way the seriousness of the appellant’s criminal conduct, it is to be noted that the appellant did not inflict any physical injury upon the complainant.’’

The judges granted the technician’s appeal and jailed him for five years and nine months with a non-parole period of three years and nine months.

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